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> Results: NBA Ballers: Rebound
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Eschewing the typical team play of most basketball games, NBA Ballers: Rebound focuses on the one-on-one experience. Like its PlayStation 2 siblings, this one focuses on the urban hip-hop ﾑbling' culture that pervades much of modern professional basketball, making greed and showiness as much a part of the game as ball-handling skills. Unlocking extras and buying lots of fancy material wealth dominate over gameplay.
The presentation is tremendous with wonderful graphics and superb sounds. The soundtrack streams continuously, but is varied enough (within the confines of hip-hop) to keep it from becoming repetitive. Likewise the court sounds and announcers are variable enough to keep things lively. Movement and execution of basic and special moves make full use of all of the PSP controls to the point that it is an exhausting undertaking to play for more than a few minutes at a time. There is also a problem with the way the game seems to give itself superhuman abilities. While the core basketball game is reasonably solid, the games themselves become repetitive and the load-times are excruciating. That takes away much of the enjoyment of buying new items, and therefore limits the replayability. For short bursts of one-on-one action this looks and plays very nicely, but between the load times, controls and questionable opposing player skill, this quickly becomes frustrating enough to change the way you play.  
In NBA Ballers: Rebound you buy your friends. That sounds odd, but in a culture obsessed with ever-increasing material wealth, perhaps it is not out of place. The game is dripping with that culture, and your opinion of that mindset and its impact on basketball will directly impact your enjoyment of the game. Not only that, but the game rewards behavior that goes well beyond healthy competitionﾗthough nothing approaches the level of a punch in the face like in the classic Arch Rivals arcade game. But the ﾑin your face' attitude is rewarded with points that you can later use to buy yourself more stuff. The more you humiliate your opponentﾗby bouncing the ball off his head, for exampleﾗthe greater your reward. In the end it all comes down to collecting conspicuous wealth. The one-on-one is fun, but the only reason to keep playing is to unlock your favorite players and punish them on their own courts.
The apparent focus on humiliating wins and greed and glamour doesn't bother me because the game never pretends to be anything else. The largest part of the game is about taking a kid from the street scraping his way to fortune and fame. There is nothing that happens in the game that makes it otherwise offensive. The hip-hop music is lyrically tame, the cheering crowds and cutscene dialogue are never inappropriate, and there is no violence of any type. Also, the ﾑRags to Riches' mode is not the only way to play. You can work to unlock characters by engaging in ﾑTV Tournament'. Playing from a focus of challenging great players, this is a simple and entertaining experience as going up against Magic Johnson or Kareem is a blast, even if it feels the same as playing any of the other matches. This review edited by Dave Long Comments? Chat about it in our forums! Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Browse Amazon.com's selection of "nba ballers" themed games Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: NBA Ballers: Rebound |
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